Higher capacity Intel SSDs to arrive in Q4

Following the release of X18-M and X25-M solid state drives for general consumers late last year, and later on an X25-E Extreme variant for the enterprise market, a recently leaked roadmap suggests Intel has plans to broaden its SSD line with higher-capacity models in the fourth quarter of 2009.

According to the roadmap, Intel will double the size of its current X25-E drives to 64GB and 128GB, while introducing a new 320GB model in its mainstream X18-M and X25-M series on top of the current 80GB and 160GB capacities. VR-Zone notes that the upcoming drives will all use 34nm flash memory chips – which is a sizeable shrink compared to the current 55nm process technology – and updated controllers to improve performance. There is no mention of an actual release date or pricing for the drives nor has Intel offered any comment as to what performance improvements we can expect.